Many documents can exist in either digital or visual form, or in both forms. Documents are often filed or archived by theme and/or time period. For example, a theme of a wedding may be documented by a visual photo album plus a collection of digital photos and video clips that is stored on a computer hard disk drive or on a digital optical medium. In the office environment, a binder titled “Customer XXX—year YYY” may contain paper documents, while an office server stores emails and electronic documents related to the same customer and time period.
Digital cameras capture pictures digitally, and often such digital pictures are printed and thus converted to visual form. Similarly, letters and contracts are typed using a word processing application and are saved in digital form, with a printed copy providing a corresponding visual version. Also, conversely, some drawings are sketched by hand on paper in visual form, and are then scanned and digitally stored.
Separate storage or archival of electronic and paper forms of related documents is easily and seamlessly managed in the short term, but may become a problem as time goes by. After two, five or ten years, the paper version will often survive in tangible visual form, while the electronic counterpart may get lost or become hard to find.
Responding to the need to keep together visual documents and related digital counterparts, some vendors are offering document binders that include a CD pocket, and the user is encouraged to keep in such albums or binders both paper and electronic copies of related documents. However, accessing electronic copies on a CD/DVD requires a CD/DVD drive, which many notebook computers no longer include. Moreover, a CD or DVD disk must be removed from its corresponding photo album or document folder for reading, and then may be easily misplaced and lost, which may be noticed only years later when searching for a digital document. Furthermore, the longevity of data burned onto CDs and DVDs varies greatly, depending on the quality of the media, burner and storage conditions, and often data will not survive for as long as the anticipated period of time.